Heroin Why I.V. heroin is less risky (for ME) than other methods

[Swimmingdancer]

Oh yes, I do understand what you're saying. It's definitely possible that what you are saying is true, I just meant that I wasn't sure the links proved it. The info was pretty vague (and on some points contradictory) and one of the links used "fastest" to mean that the actual administration process was fastest, in that getting out a needle, preparing a drug for injection, finding a vein and injecting it is slower than using an inhaler to dispense a drug into the mouth. One of the links actually listed intravenous as the fastest ROA, and one didn't seem to mention smoking/inhalation at all or any comparison of onset speeds. And could there also perhaps be other factors at play, for example what is the amount of time it takes for the drug to be inhaled and then absorbed into the bloodstream from the lungs?

 

[oxyaddict05]

Well, I posted the first 4 links I found. I'm sure there are way better ones out there. But remember, 'fastest' depends on context. A drug user devoted source may place IV above smoking. A nursing source may be similar. These two examples would be rightfully more concerned with practicality. If it was a more in depth and technical source, fastest would most definitely be listed as inhalation, as it is technically accurate. Or so they claim.

I myself was skeptical until I realized how much less of the circulatory system an inhaled drug would need to go through before entering the brain. However, an injection into the carotid artery, while almost a death wish, would be faster than inhalation, for the same reason that an arm shot would be quicker than a foot shot. I then saw a detailed report that was so technical it had to be right lol. Half kidding there, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

I'm sure an intracerebral injection would be the fastest of them all (certain death wish)!

I had an interesting experience when I had endocarditis. I had a pick line installed that entered my upper arm and was 'snaked' directly into or almost into the heart. Being on IV vancomycin for 2 months out-patient, I was able to connect (via threaded catheter end) a 10cc saline flush syringe to the pick line and administer cocaine, heroin, and a combination of both. I can say that these were the most intense rushes I have ever experienced. In fact, when I injected into my arm after having the pick line removed, there was a large noticeable decrease in rush intensity.

This was perhaps one of the most reckless things I have done in my life and I would not recommend it to anyone. Thank God I don't use 'hard' drugs anymore. The way I used, I am fortunate to be still on this good earth alive.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Yeah, I hear you there; I cringe when I think of some of the things I did when I was addicted to heroin.

I also agree with you when you said

The figures are typically listed as:
7-10 seconds for inhalation.
15-30 seconds for injection.

Although from personal experience I would deduct 3-5 seconds from both of those figures.

All the sources I have read say that injection of heroin takes 7-8 seconds for peak effects, so it must begin reaching the brain even slightly before that (maybe a second or 2). Personally I swear I've noticed effects even sooner than that (from heroin injection in the arm), maybe at around 3 seconds. So I would assume it reaches the brain before then. I'm not sure about smoking as I don't have much experience with it; when I did smoke heroin I didn't notice the effects anywhere nearly as strongly and as far as I recall they didn't seem to come on for about 10 min or more, but one can't tell from the onset of perceivable effects when it actually begins entering the brain.

 

[limonov]

So you argument is essentially-

I have extremely poor impulse control that leads me to take large/dangerous doses if I snort my heroin.

So I shoot it, because if I take too much I'll know immediately from my body having a strong histamine reaction.

You don't need to rationalise harmless things to complete strangers on the internet.

Have fun collapsing your veins, regular IV use rarely does anything positive when it comes to impulse control problems. Then again if you've already spent time hoovering up huge lines of junk you probably know all this. In fact I'd go as far as to bet that your unconscious awareness of the self-destructiveness of your behaviour is what led to the creation of this thread. People tend to only ask questions they already have an answer for.

. As mentioned above, I hope you don't ever end up getting some fucking fire-ass dope (75%+ pure), a bag with a huge hotspot in it or get sold some fentanyl derivative as heroin.

 

[Swain]

IVing dope hits you faster than smoking it.. this is why. When you IV, you can put your whole shot into one hit. Lets say your dose is 4 bags or around 400mg of heroin when you get high. You can put that all in one shot..and as soon as teh plungers down your getting that rush.

Maybe a SINGLE hit would hti you faster than shooting, but try smoking 400mg of powder, or even 50mg of powder. You do nto take one hit. It might take you 10 minutes to get high lol vs just sticking a needle in adn pushing down.

The heroin over here is shit for smoking, and IMO you are retarded fi you choose that ROA. You sniff or shoot, or maybe plug (no experience personally). But that is because we get that fluffy white powdered heroin. Anyone who uses NJ/NY/PA dope will tell you they've probably never even seen someone attempt to smoke it.

Have fun collapsing your veins

If you have proper technieques you should never collapse a vein. Maybe after a decade or something.. in 5 years I have not collapsed a single vein. I alwas use new pins and the key is rotating injection sites. For me whether I sniff or shoot it hasn't really changed my fiend status. The only problem is that when I switch back to sniffing it takes a while for my tolerance to drop backdown.. I feel like I need 4 bundles instead of 1 which is partially mental.

I would never recommend switching to IV. The notion that it's safer OD wise than smoking is rubbish. WHen you smoke, it takes a while to take hit after hit, you can guage your high. Same with sniffing.. unless your tolerance is VERY low, your whoel dose is not a single line. When you IV, once that plunger is down it's done, whatever waas in that pin is in you. You could stop half way though let teh dope hit you then continue but you wont find many IVers donig that, because you loose the rush.

 

[crOOk]

Terribly sorry to revive an old off topic conversation, but has anyone here actually considered looking at the clock when comparing the two routes? Sounds easy enough.

That being said, the onset should be sooner when smoked vs. iv'ed (time to first perceived effects), but since the rate at which you administer is lower when smoking it the rush isn't as intense. The peak plasma concentration will also always (!) be lower when smoking a substance because it is a wasteful process, not all of it is evaporated, not all of it is absorbed and for some substances part of the material decomposes. Also, due to the lower rate at which it is administered and the earlier onset when smoking heroin, it should also be cleared from the plasma sooner (e.g. bind to your neurons) which is another reason for lower peak plasma concentration.

Btw whoever said that, the path for all veins (except for pulmonary veins which you cannot reach with a needle) is the same, the jugular vein is a vein still and leads to the heart. However the jugular vein is closer to the heart and blood flow is aided by gravity when sitting or standing which is why a substance will hit you faster when injected into it vs being injected into e.g. the dorsal veins of your foot. Maybe you were thinking of injecting into the carotid artery? I would not encourage anyone to do that lol, however despite the madness such behaviour would require I could imagine it provides quite the rush, even more intense than the aboslutely amazing sounding experience oxyaddict05 had there since in his case the largest portion of the substance isn't carried to the brain so the maximum "safe" (lol) dosages that can be used would have to be lower I think.

As for the OP's claims, Swain has sufficiently explained why smoking is much safer than iv'ing.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2117615/
sigh... I'd say it was an accident. Despite the article's claims for those carotid injections to have been frequent I'd say she was going for the jugular vein.

 

[Lorne???]

So we hear a lot about heroin overdose and why you shouldn't inject heroin because it increases the chances you will overdose.

I just wanted to say that in my personal life, the opposite is true. Why? Because I find that if I inject too much heroin at once, I get an extremely intense, painful, very itchy rush. Because of this, there is a limit to how much I can inject and the limit is well below overdose territory. In fact, the limit is even below getting pretty high territory, meaning I have to perform multiple injections if I want to get high.

Now back when I used to sniff heroin, I had no such problem like this, no painful rush. So I would just sniff huge amounts all at once, because that would give me the best feeling as it kicked in. Basically, I can sum it like this:

Snorting: the more the merrier
Shooting: small amount is better than large amount


So am I the only one like this? I asked a friend about it and he told me he doesn't have a problem with painful rushes and he doesn't mind the itching all over feeling you get from a large shot, so obviously for him shooting does not add safety. But I cannot stand that itching feeling, so ironically, IV use drastically reduces my risk of overdosing.

Dude, that must be some awful fucking heroin.

That us a morphing rush you're describing. Is getting good dope really that hard?

This is horrible advice though, since pure dia won't ever feel bad.

 

[Lorne???]

Terribly sorry to revive an old off topic conversation, but has anyone here actually considered looking at the clock when comparing the two routes? Sounds easy enough.

That being said, the onset should be sooner when smoked vs. iv'ed (time to first perceived effects), but since the rate at which you administer is lower when smoking it the rush isn't as intense. The peak plasma concentration will also always (!) be lower when smoking a substance because it is a wasteful process, not all of it is evaporated, not all of it is absorbed and for some substances part of the material decomposes. Also, due to the lower rate at which it is administered and the earlier onset when smoking heroin, it should also be cleared from the plasma sooner (e.g. bind to your neurons) which is another reason for lower peak plasma concentration.

Btw whoever said that, the path for all veins (except for pulmonary veins which you cannot reach with a needle) is the same, the jugular vein is a vein still and leads to the heart. However the jugular vein is closer to the heart and blood flow is aided by gravity when sitting or standing which is why a substance will hit you faster when injected into it vs being injected into e.g. the dorsal veins of your foot. Maybe you were thinking of injecting into the carotid artery? I would not encourage anyone to do that lol, however despite the madness such behaviour would require I could imagine it provides quite the rush, even more intense than the aboslutely amazing sounding experience oxyaddict05 had there since in his case the largest portion of the substance isn't carried to the brain so the maximum "safe" (lol) dosages that can be used would have to be lower I think.

As for the OP's claims, Swain has sufficiently explained why smoking is much safer than iv'ing.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2117615/
sigh... I'd say it was an accident. Despite the article's claims for those carotid injections to have been frequent I'd say she was going for the jugular vein.

Where you shoot up isn't effecting the rush, any more than using a lower volume of water makes it more intense(junky myth).

We're taking a matter of seconds here, and H metabolizes in the CNS anyway, so no practical difference.

(Edit ": oh didn't see it was revived, but, smoking isn't faster than IV, that's a misconception. Tmax is about the same; but IV is faster for all practical purposes, as it's a single dose delivered at once, with no limits(diamorphine soluble at 500mg/ml, few can do more than that!!!) but even under ideal conditions, smoking isn't faster, this is well established, just check out some studies, or better yet, IV some nicotine, and then tell me what was faster, IV or a cig.